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[CharlieBrown]

The fact that they call Obama a socialist one month and then call him a facist another kills any credibility with me. I personally do not watch MSNBC, or any other news stations and won't deny that there is bias but you can't deny that Fox isn't the yin to their yang.

[JuntaJoe]

Believe me when I tell you that Fox isn't all that far to the right of center. And they do make the effort to be balanced.

MSNBC doesn't even try. They just have committed to the left camp and gave up being journalists for a career in commentary years ago.

Ted Koppel? Lefty. Watched him anyway. Charlie Rose? Lefty. Still watch him.

Why? They left their bias off the screen. They stuck with the neutral commentating and focused on simply asking the basic questions. Nothing leading or shaky about their work.

The News Hour or Jay Leno? They refuse to let anyone know their slant, though I suspect they are all a bit left. Doesn't matter to me because I know they leave their opinion at the door.

I know when a journalist is blocking their personal views and just getting their job done. Then I can respect them for just doing their jobs like anyone else. True news journalism requires impartiality. If I can separate my lefty journalists that way then I can be declarative about MSNBC. They have no shame at bring their bias to work with them. They are nothing but lefty talk radio with a tv camera instead. At least the right wing talk radio hosts don't go around calling themselves journalists. All of them will tell you they are opinionators and entertainers. They know they don't report the news. They only comment on it.


As for what I said above about Fox, believe it. They don't even come close to the right bias like some outlets I know. If you see them as far right wing then you are viewing from too far left. Fox is soft core right wing. If you were closer to the center you would see the right goes on a long ways farther past Fox.

Maybe I should put you on the Jon Birch Society mailing list. That will wake you up!

[CharlieBrown]

You say soft core right wing but that is still right. So I will take that as an admission that Fox has a right-wing bias, even if barely, and say that I have won this argument for the good of mankind and the children. Good day!

No but seriously, of course they aren't way over there. If MSNBC was way, way, way to the left you think anyone would watch them besides stoners who have only gotten as far as the first few pages of The Communist Manifesto?

Also, Fox might not be apart of what is the Old Right but they were certainly tools to what GWB was pushing. It has been confirmed that The White House sent Fox talking points every day to influence their base.

Again, I don't watch the news because I believe tv is for entertainment only and I don't want to feel like the world is ending everytime I watch the tv.

My older brother watches that crap everyday. I remember he ran up the stairs from the basement proclaiming that Specter had become a dem. and how this was a great day in America. But I couldn't give two shits about what some old bastard trying to hold onto his seat was doing nor did I feel any better about the future.

I am a pessimist after all. It comes with being a Cubs fan.

[CharlieBrown]

On the 4th of July there was a bunch of people in a town near by standing along a major road holding up signs about revolution and complaining about taxes. Like I said before, all old people. I felt like yelling "don't forget to change your dipers before you pick up your rifles!"

Also, it was raining which added an extra kick of hilarity.

Jesus Christ, these people are teaching us liberals how to be even more whinny.

[JuntaJoe]

In your own weird way you have admitted the inevitable.

In the OCD/ADHD rush of youth there is a desire for change, no matter the direction or effect, that inevitably leads to liberalism.


As you age, become landed and with family, you will realize said change threatens what you have and will slowly erode your desire for change unless it can be proven far beyond the shadow of doubt to be of benefit.

You begin to look at the chessboard and imagine a lot farther than the next couple moves down the line.

The odds are firmly in my favor you will eventually vote like me.


It's only a matter of time. Welcome my son, welcome to the machine. :wink:

[CharlieBrown]

As long as the young are liberal you'll still be fighting the revolution against the socialist scum in your diapers.

[JuntaJoe]

You will find out that change just for its own sake is faulty reasoning. It takes a well proven alternative that functions better to make change good and lasting.


You'll be on my side of the fence eventually. Plus you'll have more money and power by then.


I can wait. :wink:

[CharlieBrown]

The day I crossover is the day I buy a gun or it is the day where I don't care about carbon emissions and let my car run in the garage.

[JuntaJoe]

Spoken better than me.....

....no wait......

......spoken exactly like me! :lol:


I don't think less of you when I say you will likely change your mind, but you just can't see it yet.


I was all peace, love, hope, and progress.....no less than twice!

Hey we were dead serious about liberalism in the 70's. Heck, even the older people were moving that way. Then after the military and stuck in the corporate nirvana that was the 80's I rebelled yet again and was willing to stand alone if need be. But then taxes, bills, property, working for the "man", and watching the same old politics as usual but rewrapped in the latest spin trend made me realize that only non-corporate conservative libertarianism had any chance of making things better. Why? Because that was the only course that took the idiots in charge out of the equation and put the burden back on me, whom I could trust, without resorting to anarchic revolution.

The lessons will come. I would tell you only not to be married to any belief system without being willing to examine its core principles. Leave everything on the table and don't try to mentally protect a few kernels that give the spin doctors a new foundation to work with.

Be willing to notice the logic flaws.

A great example is trying to care for everyone with government intervention. Throwing rice bags at Africa only seems to make it worse. Besides, even if the money was there (and it's not) to bring everyone out of the muck the earth would not support them. We might be able to all be tree huggers living in harmony with nature if say 3/4 of us die off.....now or very soon. But the same liberals that whine about protecting the planets keep demanding more food and services for the masses, which only encourages more land abuse from mining, logging, agricultural chemicals, etc.

It's a complete oxymoronic premise. To be "progressive" for everyone means planetary destruction on an increasing scale. To be environmentally friendly means being eventually being a fiendish destroyer of human life.

We try to cure African AIDS and yet the best cure might be infecting more and withholding the meds. It definitely wasn't a CIA plot like the looneys describe, but perhaps it should have been. What other way can you safeguard what is left of Africa? Handing out UN rice so there is more breeding?

That won't work. Do you really know why the big African slave trade came about? Before colonial slavery there was always a very small and modest slave trade existing between Africa and the Arabs. Very mild and more in the form of Roman slavery, which was definitely different in nature.

Ok, so the Spanish begin making pals at these small African trading outposts on their way to finding China via a sea route. The also discover America in the same hunt for that sea route. In America they find the yam. Yep, the potato variety. It traveled well enough that it got brought back to various ports, including those Arab trade ports in Africa. From there it got out into the African community.

Dialing back a bit, the African tribes were always fighting for land amongst their neighbors. They would take in the defeated tribes and incorporate them into their community and sell off the odd famous enemy warrior who would make too much trouble. The Arabs were happy since they scored a new Janissary. Life wasn't bad for the new Janissary either as they were actually inserted into the middle class of a more advanced society. They were admired, respected, and much prized. Anyway, the rest became part of the new tribe on the same old lands because the population stayed relatively static given the amount of food produced. This system had worked for a 1000 years and was relatively in balance with nature.

In comes the humble yam and food production doubles. Population explodes, but the land stays the same. Victorious tribes no longer have the room and begin hauling a lot more losers to the Arab trade ports. Arabs don't want that many though.

But along come the Spanish, and now Portuguese, who want the new wondrous spice called sugar, but the indigs in the new lands either keep running off or dying. They tell the Arabs to hold onto these new handy bodies and will pay the Arabs to keep them ready when they come calling again. Arabs say sure since they do little more than some temporary housing and feeding to make big bank. Thus the mass colonial slave trade is born.

From the yam. Food. Simple as that.

Sending food to base societies only creates more mouths and strains the system further. We've been proving it for more than 500 years.

But to let them starve would not be "progressive" right?

On the other hand letting them die of starvation would return their numbers to a sustainable level.

This is just one lone example of why the very underpinnings of a popular mindset should be looked at closer.. What seems fundamentally right, just, and humane may just kill us all eventually. Likely sooner than later too since the problem compounds geometrically. We breed like rats and now war, disease, hunger, and natural disasters are now mitigated by supposedly humane efforts.

I have several more examples like the one above that pull the stuffing out of contemporary Western liberalism.

Let me know when you are ready to examine them.

[CharlieBrown]

The example you gave was one of foreign policy. One can be a realist when dealing with international relations but a liberal when dealing with domestic policy. Example of this is FDR. Completely liberal in his dealings at home but was a shrewd diplomat and made some cold decisions during the war. You shouldn’t confuse the two.
Your reasoning is also flawed. Sure the youth are mostly liberal but some will become more to the right but not all. You make it seem like it is inevitable that all of us will be toward the right which of course isn’t true at all. If it were then it we would be living in Nixon’s wet dream right now.
There is also the simple fact that you don’t know my history and background. I come from a line of democrats. My grandfather was a big union man and all my immediate family have voted democrat for as long as I can remember.

[JuntaJoe]

CharlieBrown wrote: The example you gave was one of foreign policy. One can be a realist when dealing with international relations but a liberal when dealing with domestic policy. Example of this is FDR. Completely liberal in his dealings at home but was a shrewd diplomat and made some cold decisions during the war. You shouldn’t confuse the two.

Slavery that crossed a dozen ethnic groups in several score countries is a "foreign policy" practice?

No. It was a way of life for half the world for 500 years.

It was embedded in the very fabric of society.


Quote: Your reasoning is also flawed. Sure the youth are mostly liberal but some will become more to the right but not all. You make it seem like it is inevitable that all of us will be toward the right which of course isn’t true at all. If it were then it we would be living in Nixon’s wet dream right now.

But your reasoning is flawed with your example. Nixon was never a conservative. Never. Really. Republican didn't mean conservative until the first seeds were planted by Goldwater. Nixon was old school liberal Republican from the Rockefeller branch. Reagan was the very first conservative Republican to ever occupy the Oval office. Though Hoover could have been called middle of the road. Reagan was also the last. Both Bushes hail from Rockefeller roots. The only difference between Republicans and Democrats for most of the last century was whether they were corporate or populist liberals.

Nor does it matter if most of us end up become conservative. The people don't control the government anymore. Policy is made to placate the masses with liberal policies while oligarchs use the law to protect their enclaves. Old money protects old money. Bread and circuses for the rest of us.


Quote: There is also the simple fact that you don’t know my history and background. I come from a line of democrats. My grandfather was a big union man and all my immediate family have voted democrat for as long as I can remember.

And you just shut your mind with that.

I do it this way because we've always done it that way?

How the hell can you call that "progressive"?


I never asked you to convert. I wouldn't have been able to convince myself if I flew back in time and sat myself down for a talk.

What I said was to question all the underpinnings. Look for truth and keep an open mind. Own your own mind and don't feel chained to history and party loyalty.

I didn't vote for McCain. Didn't vote for Bush the first time. Only voted for him in 2004 because continuity in war reassures the front line troops doing the dying.

Why? Because they were tax and spend types pandering to religious and corporate minorities. Hell, I was hoping Jesse Ventura would have run.



I carry no party card in my pocket. Bring a promise of most of my expectations for government restraint and follow through when they win the big chair.


Do yourself a favor. Burn the party card and ask them what they will do, why they will do it, and how is that truly the right thing to do when considering the long term scheme of things. Then prove to yourself the math exists to make what they promise will work.

Vote for a man who will tell you no.